Tuesday, November 20, 2012

Rouge (nomadic/orphan/ETC) planets are, well, exactly what they sound
like- planetary bodies which are not gravitationally bound to a parent
star or system; instead revolving around galaxies themselves. These
objects are believed to occur as a result of their having
either been ejected from a parent system, or developing as a type of sub brown
dwarf (objects that never quite attained enough mass to achieve fusion
and become a star) that was never actually bound to any other object in
the first place. Last week, a team of astrophysicists from the University of Montreal, reported the discovery of what they believe to be the first direct observation of such a planet.

The object in question; Planet "CFBDSIR2149" - which isn't even the entire designation for the object BTW- was found amongst a group of relatively young stars (around 50-120 million years old) which make up a formation called the AB Doradus Moving group. The apparent planet's "close" proximity to our own, around 75 light years from Earth, and the fact that there
isn't a nearby parent star obstructing our view with it's own intense glow, means researchers have actually been able to do a detailed analysis of the object's atmosphere.

Using infrared imaging collected from the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope (CFHT) and the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope (VLT.),
researchers have determined CFBDSIR2149 to be a gas giant with a mass 4
to 7 times that of Jupiter, and an average temperature of around 450
degrees Celsius (850 degrees Fahrenheit).

This isn't actually the first potential rogue planet ever to have been discovered. And there
is always a chance that further observation could contradict these
initial findings, given that this is the closest and least obstructed
candidate yet known. But it seems likely at this stage that CFBDSIR2149, will end up as our
first confirmed observation of an unbound planetary mass.

Oh, and in case you were wondering. Yes, people have already started asking the "Nibiru" question. Is Ancient Astronauts still a thing? And are they currently filming? If so, $20 says they're the first to work this angle into their...um, "theories".